It was in the mid-19th century that the piano became the most popular instrument for domestic music making. By the time Pierre-Auguste Renoir made this painting, the upright piano in particular had become an almost indispensable accoutrement of the bourgeois home. Judging from her casual robe d’intérieur, a confection of white diaphanous fabric over a bluish underdress, Renoir’s young Parisienne is playing for herself or her family, rather than for a formal audience. The artist showed this work at the 1876 Impressionist exhibition, along with Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise, also on view in this gallery.

Leningrad, Hermitage and Moscow, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, From Delacroix to Matisse: Great French Paintings From the XIX century to the Beginning of the XXth century From Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago, 1988, cat. 20.

Ownership History

Monsieur Poupin, Paris, 1876 [see Paris 1876]. Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York by 1883 [see London 1883]; possibly sale, New York, Moore’s Art Galleries, May 6, 1887 for $675 [see New York Times, May 6, 1887]. Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York by 1908 [see New York 1908]; sold to Martin A. Ryerson (died 1932), Chicago for $15,000 on December 16, 1911 [Durand-Ruel stock no. 112, according to information kindly provided by Caroline Durand-Ruel Godfroy, 1995]; by descent to his wife, Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson (died 1937), Chicago; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1937.